If you were about to be poor, what would you spend your money on now?

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To make life easier when your income drops?

We have some savings that can be spent on things that will save money in the long run get term.

I've just bought a slow cooker, for example. And I'm thinking about getting our windows upgraded to save on bills.

Why on earth would you be looking to spend money in your circumstances?!? Particularly on things like new windows.

Keep your savings. Ideally have 6 months worth of expenses available.

Slow cooker sounds good. Possibly chest freezer. But for goodness sake don’t go looking for things to spend money on when you’re about to have to get a second job. That’s madness.

I’m anticipating my income to be lower once my children leave education as I will lose the child element of UC. My wage alone
isn’t really enough to live off comfortably so I will have to make changes and probably have less to live on.

In anticipation of this I’m going to make sure all debit is paid ie credit cards and car loan which will save me paying out monthly on those. Reduce subscriptions I’ll probably no longer need such as Netflix, Disney, Spotify etc. If the children are still home and working they can pay those if they want them. I want to get the house freshly decorated so that it won’t need doing for a number of years at which point I may have found a job that pays more. I will figure out how much the children will need to contribute if
living at home so we can run the house comfortably. Sort out any maintenance for the house. Any big purchases that need saving for I can start saving for now - for example, I’d quite like a summer house which is the kind of luxury purchase that will take time to save for bit I won’t have a hope of being able to get once my money drops.

Alternatively, I can look for better paying work which is something I’m also exploring.

I will lose money for one child next Aug and the last child in three years.

For drying clothes indoors without encouraging damp, I’d invest in a dehumidifier.

Spend nothing. It's amazing what you can live without

It all depends on how much money you have to spend now. If it's lots then solar panels, insulation, new windows etc all good ideas - plus I think a family holiday (not ££££s) as it might be a while before you get another one. also replace any dying appliances and get an air fryer. Get an outside washing line if you don't have one. Get birthday/Christmas presents in advance. Make sure you keep some in savings.

if you don't have thousands to spend, then stock up on loo paper, toiletries, cleaning materials and store cupboard food items. Pasta, rice, dried beans, oats, sugar, salt, spices, oil, tinned food especially vegetables and fruit. When I was very very poor I kept soya mince in the cupboard and if there wasn't anything else we had 'some sort of loaf' made with soya mince, flavouring from the store cupboard, whatever vegetables I could scrape off the bottom of the freezer and a tomato sauce made with tinned tomatoes. Also get dried milk. There was a time when I couldn't afford to buy milk.

How old are your children? If DH is worker fewer days does that mean less childcare? Kids are suprisingly resilent and more time can mean spending leas money eg time to order and collect books from the library.

Maybe start a new post or even this one with your current out goings and how much you need to cut back by. Moneysaving expert website is also really good. Apparently now is the time to fix energy prices.

We don't have a lot of storage space otherwise I'd be doing this.

If I were about to earn considerably less i would clear any debts to bring down monthly outgoings and avoid missing payments in future which damages your credit file.
Then id try to have 6mo of bills stashed in a high interest account.
Beyond that - depends what's left. I invest in stocks, no one in the city holds cash or bonds I'm afraid, they erode with inflation.
If you only have a little left after the 6mo cover, which should be a fiscal priority for anyone quite frankly, id look at things to make life easier - slow cooker, ninja fryer etc.
good luck.

Yes this is madness. You’re only poor when you have no money.

So dont go looking for things to spend more money on!

The real cost of being poor is everything costs more because you can’t buy that bulk deal in the super market, you can’t move money around temporarily to loan to yourself, you can’t get 0% credit card deals anymore, you can’t get pay quarterly electric you have to pay by prepay etc.

You keep as much money as you can.

If it’s as bad as you say then I would be tempted to keep even more money. Get a couple of 0% credit transfers for 5k each and get an extra 10k you can stick in a bond or something (something which beats the cost of the loan - ie. The transfer fee).

You are thinking about this the complete opposite way to which I would think about this.

I don't know if I'd be stockpiling goods at the prices they are at the moment is a good use of money.

A pack of 24 Cushelle toilet rolls was £9.50 before inflation hit. They're now £13. I'm expecting that price to go down at some point.

You do the opposite and do not spend a penny unless you have to.

What you do is draw up an extensive list of every single expense you have had over the last year and look for economies.

If you are genuinely hard up then you forget wants and only buy needs.

Do not spend any savings because if your boiler does break down or your car needs extensive work then it will be harder.

YY to solar panels - even in W Yorkshire they have brought our annual power bill form by about 40% over that last 2 years.

Solar panels typically take 6-8 years to return the value you spend putting them in. You probably can't afford that right now. Most of these types of investments take years to return the value in terms of money saved.

Depending where you live, second hand bikes are a good purchase, especially if they enable you to get rid of a car as this is an expensive item, but your kids may be too young for this to be practical.

You don't need a vast chest freezer to batch cook.

Warm jumpers and bedding will make life comfortable in winter.

A pack of 24 Cushelle toilet rolls was £9.50 before inflation hit. They're now £13. I'm expecting that price to go down at some point.

Prices for this sort of good rarely actually fall. They may stay flat for a long time/resist further inflation, but its quite unusual for the price to actually drop in £ terms.

Just hang on to the savings for when you really need them.

Can you rent out a room to a lodger or something, or rent your drive to a commuter?

Sorry, just read all your posts OP.

You're best bet is to not spend any money at all! Put your spare cash in prize bonds/high interest ISA and cash out as and when you need. Definitely don't do any large spends like solar panels - that is quite crazy. Reduce all outgoings etc and eek out your money till things improve.

Inflation will ease but that doesn’t mean prices will go down. They’ll just go up less quickly.

Do not spend stockpiling goods!

Absolutely stupid thing to do. A cupboard full of loo roll and canned tomato will be useless when what you need is £100 to pay a plumber.

Not if they’re on necessary things. Winter coat, washing machine to replace broken one. (They might be suspicious if all your white goods “broke”)

Agreed. This makes no sense. Better to use your savings to mean you don't need to work two jobs. You are no use to anyone if you are burnt out

Possibly not, but in a free market with lots of competition I would hope they would get driven down naturally, no?

Just a word of warning because I'm not sure what figures you are talking about spending, but if you will need to claim means tested benefits when you are poor you do perhaps need to consider deprivation of assets so that you aren't seen to be spending money unecessarily. Obviously this may be completely irrelevant so if so just ignore.

No spare rooms unfortunately.

Some people near us have annexes in their garden they rent out, but again - the initial outlay of having one built would take ages to recover.

Whenever I’ve looked at it, the breakeven point has been many years in the future.

I’d buy some annual passes for places so you can still take the kids out.